KittenFishMom

In the spring, when people were removing winter branches from their yards to mow, I picked up a bunch of weeping willow branches just leafing out. I tried clipping in all my tanks, and over time, they repeatedly all died. The big branches I put in the tub outside did great. We have well rooted starts of many trees. We just need to figure out where to plant them so their long roots don't get into pipes and foundations and their weak branches don't fall on anything. At first I thought the willows needed more light, and threaded them through the blinds, but I think the warm tanks water is what did them in. It might be interesting to try in a coldwater tank. I have had great luck with turnips set in about 1/4 of water on an HOB or in a basket at the top of the tank. My friend's fry love swimming around in the basket, safely away from the munching goldfish and guppies. The roots are really very pretty drifting in the water. They gobble nitrogen as they increase leaf size. They as very cheap and easy to buy in the veggie dept of the grocery store. Start a few at different times and replace if they plants start to take over. Thinking outside of the box? What box? I see no box?

@gardenman Thanks for your detailed information. I think I could set up a tank to start cycling and add some roots now so they have plenty of time to release toxins. Then after a month or so, I could add some fish and see how the fish react. I have well over 100 guppies that I am trying to rehome. These guppies have been through a lot, so I am not sure I would call them "less hardy" at this point. Are there any fish you would recommend as "less hardy" that would be good to use to test the tank? Another thought I had was that I could also soak the stumps in the lake, tied to my dock, to help them release the more toxins into a very large body of water. I wish I had thought of that earlier, I could have soaked them all summer. I also soak them next summer before adding the to my 55 gallon tank.

I have 2 amazing boxwod stumps with tons of different sized roots on them that I would like to use in my aquarium. Is this the place to ask if the stumps would be safe to use in an aquarium? They have been dug out of the ground for 1.5 years and have been sitting on the lawn most in the sun in all kinds of weather. I did a web search and found only questions about the safety of boxwood. I also found that eating the leaves can be toxic to dogs, cats, and horses. I don't know if the toxins are mostly in the leaves, that drop off and I don't know if what is toxic to mammal is apt to be toxic to a fish tanks. Has anyone used dead aged boxwood in a tank? Boxwood is extremely dense, and was used before plastics were available for technical drawing tools, musical instruments, and slide rules and such because it didn't wrap. If this question belongs elsewhere, please let me know. Thanks

@drewzero1 Chasing the fish into the net with a hand, and then covering the net with the hand works to some extent in the half cylinder, if you have good footing. Being 5'2", it can get tricky. @PineSong I wondered what that popping sound was.

@nabokovfan87 I am looking for help with the bits of uneaten fish food and "used fish food" in my tanks because of the over stocking because of the guppy population explosion. With luck the LSF will have taken most of the guppies in the next month or 2. I don't have an algae problem to speak of, so I am thinking that maybe the ghost shrimp might be what I need right now. Once the guppies are gone, I may be looking into keeping a higher quality shrimp as a pet, but right now I am just looking for creatures to help to trying to keep the tanks as healthy as I can. I would buy scuds if I found them locally, I don't trust the ones in the lake for the tropical tanks, although they were great for the native tanks when I was keeping them. I am getting burned out on water changes and might give away the rest of the fish and take a break for a few months, while I slowly do a build on my 55 tank. We have too much going on now in our lives right now. I'm hope to empty the 3.5 tanks of guppies and keep the non-guppies, which would populate 1 or made 2 10 gallon tanks without over crowding.

I carefully set up the HOB breeder box, all nice and level, and carefully skimmed the substrate for the floor of the breeder box. Then as I was pouring the cup of water and fish in, the fish flipped into the tank. Well I am pretty sure it did, because I searched the breeder with a flash light and did not see it. I had the opening of the cup facing the tanks because I knew I could not find it if it flipped down behind the tank stand. I put the bloodworms and IAL bits in and decided to leave it until tomorrow and check it with sun light, just in case the fish is in the breeder box. I think the fry food and blood worms helped a good bit. That fish had very little wiggle when I put it in the cup. I didn't think it would be swimming at all in 20 minutes, but it perked up, either from food or fear. I have my fingers crossed that it wasn't fear, because it should have been more afraid as I pulled its limp body from the tank than after swimming in the cup with food and very little light for 2 hours. I hope it sneaks out of hiding and eats tonight.

I must add a note: The hex is very hard because of the 6 corners., but the half cylinder is impossible unless you can really reach and see the flat side on the back. I would NEVER buy a FULL cylinder after netting fish in the half cylinder! I think I am going to start putting food in the net to feed them. Maybe Repashy. I use to feed my kittenfish baby brine shrimp mixed with fry food in nets to keep the big fish from getting at it. I would hold the net a bit more than a kittenfish wide from the glass and they would swim in from every direction and eat like piglets. I think Bill got videos of them swarming into the net. Visitor got such a laugh out of watching them. When they were even smaller, they looked like they were nursing from the long dropper I used.

@ColuThe breeder box is only about 2 cups of water. I can measure it. Should I try to calculate the amount of salt for the breeder box, or salt the whole 10 gallon tank? Will that kill kill my plants? His head looks big compared to his body, so I would say his belly is sunken. I have frozen bloodworms and trying to hatch brine shrimp, the the hatcher is too cold. the incandescent bulb blew and all we have is LED. I have frozen cubes of adult brine shrimp. I would have to cut them, or grate them, this guy is very small. @colu He was active for a few days when I first got him, then I looked for him, but didn't see him. He is getting more active in the cup. The IAL are mostly for him to hide in at this point. I washed them and tore them up, but they were dry and are floating. The water is less than 1/2 inch deep in the cup. I wanted the leaves to make him feel safe.

I had 2 yoyo loaches, and one disappear a few days ago. I finally gave up looking and bought a new one for my single yoyo loach. I also added 3 khuli loaches. Today I found the missing yoyo loach under a khuli loach. It was very small and did not move when the khuli loach swam away. I thought the yoyo was dead and started to pick it up off the bottom. It swam slowly off my fingers and I thought maybe it would perk up a bit if I left it alone. Just now I found in it the corner of the tank on it's side. I think it might have gotten trapped under an ornament when they got moved during cleaning I put some tank water in a food cup and added some water and ripped up IAL and some ACO Easy fry food and am holding the flat bottom of the cup on my thigh with my hand around the cup to maintain the temp and darkness. This is not a long term solution, but I wanted to keep track of the little guy while I wrote to the forum. Any advice? Should I put him back in the tank, or set up a small hospital tank? I know they like company, but I don't think I can catch the other yoyo loaches or khuli loaches with the plants in the tank. The tank has extra male guppies, so is a bit over stocked. There is plenty of detritus in the tank. The water parms have been steady for the last 3 days. I was expecting to do a water change tomorrow. He seem more upright, but might just be leaning against the side of the cup. He just turned around. I think he might be eating the fry food. Or my hand might be moving a bit, and worrying him. I could do a hospital tank or a hang on back breeder box or put him back in the tank. The breeder box up-lift water intake, and and over flow output. Thanks in advance.

@nabokovfan87 and @TOtrees Please tell me the pros and cons of ghost shrimp vs Amanos shrimp vs other types of shrimp. I got the ghost shrimp to help clean up my over stocked tanks. Hopeful The LFS can keep taking more guppies and the over stocking problem will go away. I can get ghost shrimp for $0.39 each. the Amano shrimp are $5.99 each. The assorted fancy shrimp are $4.99.

You might be a nerm if you spend more time and money caring for fish you are frantically trying to rehome for free, than you do on pretty much anything else.

Morning update. I tested the water last night before bed, and everything was OK. The water looks clear this morning, and the fish are swimming happily. I will test the water before I feed the fish. The plant even looks good. I hope I didn't bump the khuli loaches while I was planting the plant. I'm hope they felt the movement in the water and hide behind some of the IAL in the tank. @Guppysnail I had thought about mixing the cold water with some microwaved water in a bucket. I only had one clean bucket, and I don't like to toss the water I take out of a tank until I am sure everything worked right. I guess I could have used a pot from the kitchen, but at that point in the confusion, my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. I did replace the last gallon with a bottle of spring water because the tank was full of warm water, and the water in the bottom of the bucket was not very clean.

I put this in off topic because it is so wacky, I didn’t think it fit anyplace else. Tonight, after I hauled in 4 gallons of cold bottled spring water from the garage, I carefully tested all my tanks hoping I would not need to figure out how to warm the water for a water change. The water temp was just under 65F. That is a lot of water to gentle warm to 78F. All the tanks are still overstock, so water changes happen very often. Anyway, the water in the tanks all tested 0,0,X, so I was good until morning at least. I watch the fish and feed the tanks and watched them some more. I had given away about 30 guppies from one tank, so I decided to move about 15-20 from my 10 tall hex to my 10 regular tank. Piece of cake, right? Well, no it wasn’t a piece of cake. Tonight, I have a beef with whoever invented the tall hex tank. That person never needed to net small fish out of it. I have one large Amazon Sword plant in there along with a large sponge filter, an HOB, and internal (HOB like) filter, a piece of driftwood, a heater, a Betta log, a ceramic hollow log for the khuli loachs and an extra air stone for luck. To net guppies you must dodge all this and the places where the glass sides meet, because the fish just laugh and swim out of the net, up or down, where the net is held away from the glass by one of the other sides. I forgot to mention my fan club of snails all along the edge where the substrate meets the vertical glass and the yummy bits of yuck hang out. Any one of those snails will hold the middle of the net far enough from the glass that the fish can swim out of side. And when you get a few snails working together, the fish laugh as they swim out. At first things were going OK, I was getting a lot of empty nets, but had also put about ten guppies in the container hanging on the side of the tank. Then my net snagged a leaf of the Amazon Sword. I had used one of the planters from ACO, So I wasn’t too concerned. That was until I tried to slide the plant back in the planter and saw a ton of roots. I hadn’t thought about how well the roots were growing in that water with all those growing guppies. Ok, no problem, I’ll take the planter out and just plant the plant in the substrate. That is when things got interesting. I picked up the planter and months of yuck flew into the water from under the planter. Now I have a plant with a ton of dripping roots in one hand and a wet planter covered in snails and yuck in the other hand and my nice clean tested water disappearing within a cloud of, of, well to put it simply, of cloudiness. The fish in the hang on the tank container are having a good laugh as I look around for good places to put the plant and planter so I can try to make things better. I quickly grumble under my breath and put the stuff down and move the captured fish to the other tank and came back to try to plant the plant one handed. My short sleeved shirt’s short sleeve proved to be too long and very wet. I waited a bit for the water to clear to see I had planted the plant sideways and had also kicked up a bunch more cloudiness. I mumbled under my breath again and stuck both arms in and got the plant upright and the water much dirtier. At this point my water for water changes was too cold to use, and I was running low of filter media. I found a piece of old cotton muslin that I had just washed and dried and snapped as much cat hair off as I could and folded it to cover a colander and got my sweet spouse to hold that and the end of the siphon, while I siphoned the tank water through the cloth into a 5-gallon bucket. My spouse doesn’t understand why I keep fish, but he likes to humor me. After we got most of the water into the bucket, I folded my last piece of filter media into my largest net and used a cup to filter the still warm water from the bucket through the net back into the tank. At this point in time, the water looks clear, and the fish are swimming around wondering what that wacky human will be doing next. If I ever meet the person who invented the tall hex tank I’m going to through a handful of cloudiness at them !

I knew exactly what I want... I wanted to give away fish at one place and buy HOBs at the other place. That was EXACTLY what I wanted. @lefty o Do you think my lack of resolve might explain why your method did not work for me? Because I can tell you, it did not work for me !

@Flumpweesel I sometimes pretend the fish talk to me for the sake of what I am writing. I was beginning to thinks might start wondering about getting an email that no one else had received. Thank for letting everyone know I am as sane as any other Nerm.

"Never let your guard down while in a fish store" I chatted this all the way to the store and as I entered the store, but then something happened... I let my guard down in a fish store. I am working on rehoming the guppies and keeping the water clean. I test the water every day of every other day. The tanks don’t look that clean to me, and I have recently learned not to over clean a tank, or you get bacteria blooms of foggy cloudy water. I went to the LFS to drop off 25 female guppies (and I added a group of males so he could show what the offspring would look like. Besides, who is counting?) Three times I have been in the store and seen 2 female flagfish swimming in a tank, Twice I left without them. This last time I let my guard down. I put them in the male guppy tanks and “boy oh boy” were those boys happy to see females, so I moved them to the tank with the smaller female guppies. They are both relaxing and eating baby brine shrimp. They both have the spot at the back edge of the back (dorsal?) fin. One has nice dark stripy coloring, the other is rather light colored. I am guessing all those male guppies stressed her out a bit. I am hoping her contrast coloring comes back. I did not notice one being lighter than the other in the store. Once my guard was down, I talked myself into 4 cute young peppered corys. I really wanted some help cleaning up after the male guppies. Their tank needing more that the light dusting the 3 large sponge filters were doing. I then went to a chain store that carries fish to buy some bigger HOBs that were on sale. The sale price was not of the shelf. Very foolish me looked at the tanks after I asked someone to send the fish person over. I left with the HOBs, 10 ghost shrimp, one lonely yoyo loach for my lonely yoyo loach and 12 black kuhli loaches. They all promised to do a great job cleaning. (I can’t believe 12, but who is counting?) I put 5 ghost shrimp in with the male guppies and 5 in the non-guppy tank because those tanks have lots of plants. I put 3 kuhli loaches in each tank and added the yoyo to the nonguppy tank with the lonely yoyo. The yoyos swim around gossiping, telling me they clean while no one is looking. The kuhlis and the shrimp are hard to find. I know that is to be expected. I hope they are doing well. The tanks do look cleaner. I’m going to have to move some of the snails out of the planted tanks before they start eating my plants even more, now that the tanks are looking cleaner. All the tanks have a male betta patrolling for guppy fry, so I am worried the shrimp might not last very long. Keep your fins crossed for them. "That's all the news that fits"

The neon tetra that is missing the eye has decided that if she doesn't tell anyone, no one will notice. I told her her secret is safe with me and the CARE forum. She seems to be happy with that. Please don't tell anyone off the forum. I don't want her to feel self-conscious. Note: I got an email saying "Help others by going to the topic and use the 'Mark as Solution’ button on the post with the best answer". How do I do that? I don't see a "Mark as Solution" button on Guppysnail's post that lets me says she had the solution. I find she is a great source of solutions.

a yoyo loach has made several appearances tonight. I put 2 in the tank. I don't know if they are taking turns, or if only one is left. I will get more if the yoyo loach is still here when the 55 is ready. The male guppies I added to this tank ignored the big red male betta I had in their other tank. They seem very nervous about the male plakat betta in this tank. Maybe he is more aggressive, or maybe they just are not use to him yet. They are swimming deeper into the tank now, so that is a good sign.

The Styrofoam liner in the box is built like a cooler with a tight fitting lid.

The outside of the shipping box is 13" X 14" X15 1/2" The inside of the Styrofoam box is 9" X 10" X12". The cat kept helping me measure, but that gives you the general size. If I over night the box, it will cost a fair bit, but I want the fish to arrive safely. I would hate to open a box of dead fish, and I don't want to do that to my fish or to someone else. I think the ratio of water to air is 1/4 water to 3/4 air. With breathable bags, I would guess that you need to leave that much air in packing in the box, so the fish have enough oxygen. oxygen is not going to easily pass through 1.5 inches on Styrofoam on each side.

@Fish Folk The only ones I found on the site I looked at were$12 for 10 “Aquatic Arts”. I was hoping to ship a lot of guppies, but at 1 or 2 fish per bag, that won't make a dent in my over populated tanks. Can you sent me a mail with the places you order your bags? I don't think we can put store names in post. @Guppysnail I figured I would do over night. But I was hoping to put a lot of fish in the box. How many adult or young guppies would you put in a shipping bag?

Someone has offered to take some of my guppies. @Guppysnail and @Fish Folk andeveryone else: I need to get fish shipping bags. I has watched lots of videos. some recommend breathable other recommend double bagging. I need to know what size bags and how many guppies I can put in a bag. I have a shipping box that has a thick Styrofoam box inside, I'll get the measurements. Will I need a heater this time of year? Is it better to ship the fish when they are smaller or bigger? I have all sizes. All advice welcome !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just saw my yoyo loach (s) today. I haven't seen them in days. I did a water change and it or they are swimming all over the place. Do they normally hide for days at a time? I have been watching the tank at night with the blue lights on, but haven't seen them. This is the tank that got cloudy. It had cleared up pretty well, then got cloudy again yesterday. I think the 3 corys were fluffing up the substrate and kicked some stuff into the water. I added a few male guppies to see if they might help clean the substrate, but they have been staying close to the top of the water. I don't see why, there are lots of hiding places lower down and lots of air going into the water. They did it before and after the water change.

@PineSong and @Guppysnail and everyone else. I decided I would try shipping some of the guppies for free to people who want them. I need to find out were to get breather bags and would love advice on how to do this successfully. I have one large shipping box with a Styrofoam liner that I received night crawlers in. I figured I would start with that. I will do more research on shipping.

I have way too many guppies. They are very strong. Would you like me to send you some for free? I'll pay shipping.